Structural characterization of fibrous materials is required for a variety of applications such as life sciences, tissue engineering and textile engineering. One method of characterizing the fibers of such fibrous materials is through images of the material obtained by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). However, such images provide only a qualitative assessment of structural properties of the fibers and are unable to provide quantitative estimates of parameters such as diameter and alignment of individual fibers.
Typically, manual measurement of width of fibers is performed in the images obtained through scanning electron microscopy to estimate the diameter of the fibers. However, such manual measurements are time consuming and may be prone to human errors thereby providing inaccurate results. One way of measuring alignment of fibers is through image analysis of Fourier transform of SEM images. However, this technique provides information regarding overall alignment of a selected area but is unable to provide individual angle distribution for each fiber and their curvature.
Further, such measurement techniques are limited to characterization of fibrous materials with large diameter fibers and are not able to characterize materials with small diameter (e.g., nanometer scale) fibers. Moreover, such techniques are unable to characterize and track individual fibers of materials when such fibers are randomly oriented, are curved and are intertwined within the material.